


Just Ask The Dog

by CLynnB



Series: Stargate Civilians [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Stargate SG-1, The A-Team (TV)
Genre: Hellhounds, Implied/Referenced Torture, Multi, Xander's Solider Memories, memories of war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:00:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29973582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CLynnB/pseuds/CLynnB
Summary: Faith was sure that she'd felt something like Billy before. And she knew that Xander had at least a few answers for her. So she asked.And then Xander asked.
Relationships: Xander Harris/Faith Lehane/Daniel "Oz" Osbourne
Series: Stargate Civilians [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2203962
Kudos: 10





	Just Ask The Dog

Faith set her tray down on the table in the mess hall of the SGC, knowing without looking that nearly every eye in the place was on her. Xander and Oz glanced up at her as she joined them, and then continued in their quiet conversation over…curtains? Really? How very...domestic.

She sent a flirty look to one of the men at the table over, and rolled her eyes when he blinked at her in confusion. Yeah, okay she knew that she and her boys were a bit of an anomaly. So were the A-Team and the Magnificent Seven. In fact, they were the only civilian teams that were working for the SGC, even if they weren’t officially on the job yet. Hammond was giving them a little time to get settled, and since the houses weren’t quite ready yet, even after the tentative three week date had passed, they were still living on base for the moment. 

“So,” she said, interrupting what she was sure was a riveting conversation. “You ever gonna tell me what Billy is? I know he’s not a normal dog, invisible or not.” She couldn’t see Billy, the dog that supposedly belonged to Murdock of the A-Team (or SGA-Team as they were beginning to be called), but she could feel him. Oz could sense him, especially when he was a wolf (as evidenced on the planet they’d all met on) but he couldn’t see him as a human either. Xander, though, could, and had confirmed that Billy was indeed not a normal dog.

Billy was also a bit of a source of contention among the base at the moment. These military types were so straight-laced at times, and having an invisible dog around didn’t seem to make them happy. B.A. had already broken a few faces over their comments. Xander had helped out on one of them, actually. Faith had been impressed.

Xander eyed her silently for a moment, taking a bite of the macaroni on his plate. “Remember Prom my senior year?” he asked.

Faith blinked at him and then nearly snorted the drink she was in the process of swallowing when the comment finally made sense. Oz patted her back as she coughed. “Hellhound?! He’s a blasted hellhound?!”

That got some looks, and it was clear that—despite some soft conversations happening in the hall—they were the center of attention. These military types were such gossips.  
Xander shrugged, still eating his food. “A bit,” he conceded. “But he’s not quite like the others. Smaller, for one. And invisible. Doesn’t have teeth that can affect most people, although I think he works in probabilities. Skewing the odds in favor of his humans.” He shrugged. “I’m extremely curious to know just how he came about.”

“So ask,” Faith said, giving him a look like he was an idiot.

Xander returned the look with one of his own. “Yeah. No. They didn’t have that dog until they got back from the camps, Faith. I’m not asking about that.”

“What camps?” Faith asked, her voice softening just a bit as she frowned. 

“The Vietcong prison camps,” Xander explained. He took a deep breath and pushed his food aside. A quick glance showed that a lot of the personnel were still listening. Well, fine then. Maybe they could learn something and stop giving everyone a hard time for just existing. “I might not have been there in person, but I have the memories, Faith,” he said slowly. “And no one escaped from General Chao’s camp. When the A-Team was captured everyone pretty much wrote them off for dead. Especially since they had the person who had assassinated Chao’s brother on their team.”

“Faceman,” Oz said with a short nod. Face was the sniper; he’d have been the one to take that shot.

“Faceman,” Xander nodded. His head tilted to one side. “Two months after their capture, Colonel Smith—Hannibal—was leading twenty men back to our—Grandpa’s—base. They were the only ones that ever escaped. From what I know, Face and Murdock started the breakout, and Colonel Smith took over for them once he was able. Twenty men out of possible hundreds that had gone into that camp over the course of the war, Faith,” Xander explained. 

Faith gave a slow nod. “How does this relate to Billy, though?” she asked. Because she, frankly, didn’t quite understand.

“Billy didn’t exist until after they returned,” Xander commented, tracing a line on the tabletop. “That was when Captain Murdock started talking about a dog that no one else could see. Lieutenant Peck seemed to humor him with it, but everyone knew that Murdock had come back different.” He shrugged. “The Captain was quirky before the camps, but he’d come back broken. They were all in bad shape, though. It wasn’t pretty. I’m not about to ask them about that time.” 

“So ask the dog,” Oz said, seemingly content in Xander’s explanation.

Xander shot him an incredulous look. “The dog? You want me to ask the dog? He’s a hellhound, Oz. He can’t talk.”

Oz rolled his eyes, finishing his meal and pushing his tray aside. “You’re The One Who Sees,” the wolf said simply. And yeah, okay, that was true. 

“Ask the dog, he says,” Xander grumbled, but the two knew that he was bound to do so. 

“One more question your Soldier memories might be able to answer,” Faith said, waving her fork. The food here might not be the greatest, but it was fine overall. Not like the slop that Sunnydale High had tried to pass off as food—granted, didn’t one of the lunch ladies try to kill everyone once anyway?

“Shoot.”

“How the heck did Peck end up with a nickname like ‘Faceman’?” she asked, because honestly, that was a weird name to call anyone by. 

Xander grinned, glancing to the mess hall doors, where the A-Team was just entering. “Fucking Ace, Man!” he said, and Face visibly startled, much to the laughter of his teammates.

“What the hell?” the man asked, blinking over at the kids in the middle of the hall. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that.”

“Sorry,” Xander said, although his tone wasn’t very repentant. “She wanted to know where ‘Faceman’ came from.” 

Face stared at them for a moment, and then shrugged. “People kept yelling that at me after I finished missions. Or when I...procured certain items for our squad, or what have you,” he explained after a short pause. “After a while, it got shortened to Faceman. And then later to just Face.” 

Faith gave a nod, looking impressed. “Nice, yo,” she said, holding up her hand for a high five. Face gave her one, as did Murdock with a big grin. “Murdock, can Xander borrow Billy for a moment?” she asked, knowing the dog was present just by the shivers that had raced down her spine at their entrance. Knowing that Billy was a hellhound made her feel better, since she could place the feeling.

“Sure thing, muchacha,” Murdock grinned, waving the dog over to Xander before bouncing over to B.A. and starting up a diatribe that was sure to annoy the man. Hannibal was watching all of this with a grin, unlit cigar clenched firmly between his teeth. 

Xander grabbed the dog by the scruff, eyeing the mean looking face before looking right into its eyes. “Okay, Billy. Want to tell me where you came from?”

Billy blinked his large orange eyes and then showed him.

_Fire and brimstone and pain. He was the runt. He wasn’t right. His brothers and sisters being pulled from the fire place, brought into service by an evil man with evil eyes. Billy had gone too, but wrong. He wasn’t wanted so he wasn’t seen. He hadn’t formed correctly. He was there, though, watching as the evil man used his brothers and sisters to tear apart the screaming men. He watched as the evil man, who Chao called his second, tortured the men with pleasure. He watched as Peck screamed and screamed but never spoke and Murdock finally stopped screaming and spoke too much of nothing of worth. He watched as Murdock watched him, realizing that maybe he could help. He didn’t like the evil man. He didn’t like watching his brothers and sisters do the man’s bidding, despite his siblings clearly reveling in it. He didn’t like any of this._

_He did like Murdock and Murdock’s friend._

_So when the evil man decided that the two would have to die, when the evil man instructed that his brothers and sisters kill the soldiers, Billy attacked instead. He hadn’t been summoned correctly, but he still had his teeth. And he used them to kill his brothers and sisters and to rip the throat from the evil man. And when Peck and Murdock used that distraction to initiate a break out, despite being half-dead themselves, he followed them._

_He’d lost his teeth when his summoner died, but he could still mess with the odds. He could still protect these men. And Murdock named him Billy and Face gave good belly rubs. So he stayed._

Xander sat back with a sigh, running a hand down the large head of the dog. Except for the size he’d say that the dog resembled a Dobermann/Great Dane mix. He was much too small for that, though, even if the look was there. “If you ever want your teeth back, we can probably do something about it,” he whispered into the dog’s pointed ear. Billy panted, tongue hanging out of his mouth, and then bounded back over to the table that his owners were at. Face absently gave him a pat, deep in conversation with Hannibal.

“So?” Faith asked after a moment, seeing the pain in her lover’s eye. 

“Evil men with evil ideas,” Xander sighed softly, rubbing at his eye. He wasn’t going to share what he’d seen in this cafeteria. Not with so many listening in on their conversations, and especially not with Murdock and Face sitting so close by. “Billy is the most protective hellhound I’ve ever seen,” he said. He gave Oz a look. “Could you see about giving him tangible teeth again but not making him visible?”

Oz shrugged. He could look into it, having a few ins due to dating Willow at one point and then being in Tibet with the monks. “Why not visible?”

“The best fighter is the one that’s underestimated, right?” Xander grinned. He shrugged again. “I was right about his skewing the odds in the favor of those men. It’s why out of all those fire-fights there haven’t been as many injuries. But Billy might need to be able to bite again someday and I’d like to make sure he’d be able to.”

Faith gave a nod, filing away what little Xander had been willing to say. “So…another question. Where does ‘Xander’ come from then?” she grinned, because most Alexanders went by Alex.

“Willow couldn’t say Alexander,” Xander shrugged, getting up to put his tray away. “Why on Earth are you asking now?”

“Curious,” Faith said with a grin of her own, following behind him. She slipped her hand into his back pocket, and Oz did the same on the other side. Xander rolled his eye; he knew what they were doing. They were giving these military people something else to gossip about, aside from just the juicy details they’d gotten on the A-Team. 

Clever.

**Author's Note:**

> The story of Billy has been told. And my personal favorite headcannon of how Face's nickname came about.


End file.
